This terror will continue until we take Arab grievances seriously by David Clark, The Guardian

It must now be obvious, even to those who would like us to think otherwise, that the war on terror is failing. This is not to say that the terrorists are winning. Their prospects of constructing the medieval pan-Islamic caliphate of their fantasies are as negligible today as they were four years ago when they attacked America. It is simply to point out that their ability to bring violence and destruction to our streets is as strong as ever and shows no sign of diminishing. We may capture the perpetrators of Thursday’s bombings, but others will follow to take their place. Moreover, the actions of our leaders have made this more likely, not less. It’s time for a rethink.

The very idea of a war on terror was profoundly misconceived from the start. Rooted in traditional strategic thought, with its need for fixed targets and an identifiable enemy, the post-9/11 response focused myopically on the problem of how and where to apply military power. …

It should be clear by now that we cannot defeat this threat with conventional force alone, however necessary that may be in specific circumstances. Even good policing, as we have found to our cost, will have only limited effect in reducing its capacity to harm. The opposite response – negotiation – is equally futile. How can you negotiate with a phenomenon that is so elusive and diffuse? And even if you could, what prospect would there be of reaching a reasonable settlement? The term “Islamofascism” may be a crude political device, but those who coined it are right to see in Bin Ladenism a classic totalitarian doctrine that accepts no limits in method or aim. What they want, we cannot give.

An effective strategy can be developed, but it means turning our attention away from the terrorists and on to the conditions that allow them to recruit and operate. No sustained insurgency can exist in a vacuum. At a minimum, it requires communities where the environment is permissive enough for insurgents to blend in and organise without fear of betrayal. This does not mean that most members of those communities approve of what they are doing. It is enough that there should be a degree of alienation sufficient to create a presumption against cooperating with the authorities. We saw this in Northern Ireland.

From this point of view, it must be said that everything that has followed the fall of Kabul has been ruinous to the task of winning over moderate Muslim opinion and isolating the terrorists within their own communities. In Iraq we allowed America to rip up the rule book of counter-insurgency with a military adventure that was dishonestly conceived and incompetently executed. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed by US troops uninterested in distinguishing between combatant and noncombatant, or even counting the dead. The hostility engendered has been so extreme that the CIA has been forced to conclude that Iraq may become a worse breeding ground for international terrorism that Afghanistan was. Bin Laden can hardly believe his luck.

The political dimensions of this problem mean that there can be no hope of defeating terrorism until we are ready to take legitimate Arab grievances seriously. …

TheStar.com – Bush’s war on terror is a colossal failure by Haroon Siddiqui

Blair added: “We will not allow violence to change our values and our way of life.” And Anne McLellan parrotted: “We will defend our way of life.”

This is a Bush-ian formulation: they hate us because we are free. It cleverly obviates any need for self-scrutiny.

It is also patently false.

Terrorists, if they are to be believed, are targeting us because of our policies in Muslim lands. Thursday’s communiqué made that clear enough.

Terrorists also have already changed our way of life.

Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo Bay. Secret prisons abroad. “Renditions.” Torture. Assassinations. CIA abductions, even on the friendly soil of Italy.

Fear still rules America. Even after waging a war on false pretences, Bush can find refuge from low approval ratings by continuing to link Iraq to 9/11, as he did the other day before — where else? — military cadets.

Our own governments are invading our privacy, suspending civil liberties, criminalizing entire communities and repeatedly exhorting us to be “vigilant,” thereby risking vigilantism, the anti-thesis of the rule of law.

All this may be excusable if it were making us any safer.

Not so easy to ‘carry on’ By Candida Crewe

We returned to see Tony Blair on the news being the statesman … talking of how these attacks would not change our “values” and “way of life.” They seemed like the rather meaningless and wishy-washy platitudes that politicians tend to employ in the face of such atrocities, but in this instance they stuck in the gullet more than usual.

I suspect Blair’s codependent love affair with George Bush and our repellent involvement in Iraq is largely responsible for today’s “inevitable.”? Of course, the prime minister is right: Few Londoners will want to appear to let the terrorists “win,”? to allow them to thwart our freedom of movement, to compromise our principles of liberty and democracy or to resort to religious hatred. But, we might not have had to think about this so much in the first place had he not willingly followed the Americans to war. And over the coming days in London and all England, who can guarantee there will not be some racist backlash against our Muslim communities?

For myself, for other parents of young children and for indeed the majority, we can only hope not. It feels a bit rich when Blair insists the attacks must not change our way of life. Easy to say, but several hundred people’s lives were changed on Thursday, beyond measure.

For the rest of us, while our lives may not change quite so manifestly (we shall just continue to avoid the tube and even West End musicals with our children), our famous British resilience or, as the cliche has it, our “stiff upper lip,”? is quivering a little. With full-blown anger as well as low-burn fear for the future. As well it might.

I was moved by Blair’s assertion that we would not allow terrorism to change our way of life. Perhaps it is a platitude. If only Bush had said such a thing, instead of changing everything in America. mjh